It's not always a smooth, pretty process - and we can't expect it to be - but the process needs to yield results.

And the results of the deal between Rock Valley College and Chicago Rockford International Airport should be apparent within a relatively short time.

It's all about creating jobs. Nothing will transform the community faster than providing employment that pays well. Rockford needs to get beyond the ubiquitous minimum wage jobs and provide opportunities that will pay a worker enough to support a family.

The RVC-airport deal, and the spinoffs that are sure to follow, will provide that opportunity.

This is a big deal that has the promise of transforming Rockford as much as the formal effort to do so hopes.

RVC will do what it does best: educate students. Those students will graduate with the skills needed to work in the fast-growing aviation sector.

The airport will do what it does best: create economic opportunities. In this case it's doing so by giving the college a free, 20-year lease for about 2 acres of land between two runways. The college would pay to build a 40,000-square-foot classroom facility on the site. The facility is expected to be ready for classes either in spring or fall 2015.

RVC will expand its aviation maintenance program so that it eventually graduates 150 students a year. Those graduates should find ready employment in a maintenance, repair and overhaul facility, or MRO, a short distance from where they will get their training.

Already, there's Emery Air, an MRO that services private planes, which has 165 employees and contractors and has clients from as far away as Alaska. The company has been growing.

An even larger MRO has been on the airport's wish list for years and it appears a new company will enter the market soon. The prospect of a ready workforce should be enticing. That operation could employ as many as 500.

Duluth, Minn., which will be home to an AAR Corp. MRO, expects the 225-person operation to generate $39 million worth of economic activity in the city. Imagine how that kind of economic activity would affect Rockford.

RVC graduates will have opportunities all over the country.

MROs employ 306,000 U.S. workers and have added 30,000 jobs since 2009, according to the Aeronautical Repair Station Association. Nationally, MROs have a direct and indirect impact of $47 billion on the economy, ARSA says.

The need for aviation-related jobs will grow as older workers get ready to retire. A 2012 study by Boeing shows the need for 601,000 maintenance technicians across the globe by 2031. More than 90,000 of those jobs will be in North America.

During the summer, it appeared as though a private school based in Tulsa, Okla., would fill the role RVC has moved into. Spartan College of Aviation and Technology was attracted to Rockford, but has put its expansion plans on hold, creating the opportunity for RVC to step in. Spartan could become a player in the future, but RVC is the present.

Page 2 of 2 - There have been plenty of obstacles along the way, including an uneasy relationship between Spartan and RVC. Then, late last year, it looked as if the deal would fall apart because of the cost of the project to RVC. There were many times where we feared Rockford would live up to its reputation of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Airport Executive Director Mike Dunn, however, has been tenacious in working with his board of directors, RVC trustees and administration and anyone else who has a stake in the future of Rockford.

We congratulate airport officials, RVC and everyone else involved with making this deal, and we look forward to the next step in Rockford's transformation.